flame turns blue
by salvation-dear
Summary: After 6x08, "Red John". Jane keeps running.
1. Chapter 1

flame turns blue

by

salvation-dear

* * *

Spoilers for 6x08, "Red John".

* * *

Author's Note: title is from the David Gray song of the same name.

* * *

1) every stone i ever threw

* * *

Jane keeps running. Til his knees and back ache, until sweat makes his clothes chafe against his skin, until his lungs burn and his ears ring and his eyes start to tear up. When he swipes a hand beneath first one and then the other eye, his cheeks are soaked. It could be sweat.

He hasn't run like this since he was child, and never then with this kind of purpose: always stopping before he wore himself down. He gets some odd looks on busier streets, but mostly the few people around ignore him. This suits Jane just fine. He wants to be ignored: is looking forward, in fact, to a new life where no-one will look at him or speak to him or expect anything from him. That that sounds more like death than life is not something he's prepared to consider right now. For now, he just wants to run, letting the wind blow across his cold face and feeling his body ache and thinking finally, thankfully, about nothing.

* * *

Long before he stops, he has black spots in his vision, then shimmering multicolored mirages. His feet start to hurt and then hurt more and then are excruciatingly painful and then they are numb, and through it all he keeps running. He falls twice, that he remembers – once a graceless slide down gravel that he ends up accepting knees-first and feels the breeze on the skin of his legs when he immediately jumps up afterward, and once over a seam in the path that he didn't even see because his vision was going dark. That time, he stayed down for a long minute, listening to his breath rasp in his ears. Then he got up and started running again. The first few steps were the hardest. They always are.

He doesn't know where he's running. He sees some landmarks again and again, not sure if he's running in circles or running into a dream. It doesn't seem to matter, as long as his mind stays clear and his feet keep moving. For a while, his consciousness seems to leave his body entirely and he floats, floats while his faraway body keeps running as though directed by someone else. He can see from above how terrible he looks – poor broken-down besuited man, running from some demon that can now never catch him.

He comes back to himself in time, though, and then the streets start to look familiar, and he curses himself once his brain catches up. He's not sure he has it in him to turn around, though. He's gone through bone tired and into walking dead. He's been walking dead for years, if he's honest, the only things keeping him going his heartbeat and these labored sucking breaths and Lisbon.

* * *

He knows her alarm code, after a moment's thought. 5-8-2-5-9. L-U-C-K-Y. He remembers when she told him the story, remembers her little secretive smile that could have been just because she was telling him a favorite personal story, but wasn't. It was an old joke between her and Sam Bosco, when he'd come by her apartment to give her a ride to work one morning when her lemon of a car wouldn't start. When she'd opened the door, her dog limped out to meet him, waving his tail. The dog had had the limp since before Lisbon found him; had cataracts and skin allergies and he wheezed and had once bitten the UPS guy, who'd threatened to sue. It went without saying that he was Lisbon's kind of dog.

"Answers to Lucky, huh?" Bosco had said, leaning down to pet him.

When she was telling him the story she hadn't provided the details, but Jane knew she'd laughed; probably pushed her hair back behind one ear as she grabbed her keys. Bosco would have watched her with level, thirsty eyes, and tried to pretend he wasn't staring. She wouldn't have even noticed.

Jane wonders if she ever thinks about the fact that there have only ever been two people on the planet who could have guessed her alarm code first try, and that one of them had died with her name on his lips. It's the kind of thing Jane thinks about a lot.

* * *

It's cool and too dark in her apartment: Jane hears his breathing, still rough although he'd walked the last few miles. He'd started coughing after another crowd of black spots covered his vision, and when his eyes had cleared he'd seen blood on his hands. He panicked for a moment; scrubbed his hands down his vest repeatedly, hysteria rising in his throat. Then he remembered: he'd coughed into his hands. Raising a finger to his lips, he saw fresh, bright red blood again. It was his own blood: merely his lungs giving out or the beginning of a consumptive illness or some other such minor detail. He almost laughed, then thought about what Lisbon would say if she saw him leaning against a wall at the side of the road, coughing up blood, and he'd started walking.

It smells like her and like clean laundry and, inexplicably, like figs. He is suddenly so homesick for her it hurts. She isn't here. He'd known she wouldn't be, but some tiny, stupid, romantic part of him imagined she would be, worrying about him and furious as a tiny whirlwind.

Her apartment is as quiet as a grave. He wonders about her neighbors, why he's never seen any of them, what kind of security this area has. Lisbon is an arsenal unto herself. He wonders briefly where she keeps her spare weapons, and whether they're loaded, then tamps the thought down firmly. He could figure it out without much effort, even with his brain as muddy and slow as it is. But after everything, he owes her more.

Also, he wants to see her face again. It's unfair to her – this wasn't part of his plan, and if he didn't feel like he was maybe never going to be able to walk again, he'd leave. He'd do the right thing for her and leave her far behind.

Jane's always been good at that in the past. Somewhere along the line it became part of his life goal - along with seeing the light go out of Red John's eyes, whoever Red John might be, and then letting himself rest, for whatever rest might mean after that. Somewhere in that grim tapestry he'd sewn in new words, though - "Save Lisbon", like one of those campaigns he saw advertised on television in between documentaries. He was a one-man Save Lisbon taskforce, and he would let her be hurt if it meant she was alive and well enough to curse his name another day. After everything, he owed her that.

It's turning colder outside, or maybe it's his internal temperature dropping. He does feel like he's sweated out half of his body weight. He thinks about drinking some water but is surprised how nauseated he feels at the thought, and how far away, suddenly, the kitchen faucet seems. Instead, he toes off his shoes and pulls a throw rug off the back of Lisbon's couch and curls up under it, thinking that he'll just sit there for one minute and then he'll figure out what to do.

He blinks at the window, at the evening turning blue, and is asleep almost instantly. He doesn't dream.

* * *

Jane has always been a light sleeper, but he hears sounds in his ears for some time before he can force himself to swim up to consciousness again. A light turns on, blinding him immediately. He should be on guard, should be protecting himself. No good ever comes of being surprised out of sleep, unless it's just been Lisbon kicking his couch to try and get him to come and do something boring, like explain what he'd thought he was doing.

He has a strong feeling those days are over, though.

His vision clears, and he sees Lisbon, her face shadowed by the light behind her. He should be grateful she's not a murderer sneaking up on him in the night; instead he's just grateful she's _her_.

She's pointing a gun at him, he notices idly, and as his gaze travels to it she looks sheepish and holsters it.

"Damn it, Jane," he hears her say, as though from far away. "I nearly shot you and you slept through it."

"I was tired," he says, by way of apology, as she crosses the floor to him. There's an awkward moment where she pauses in front of the couch, and luckily Jane is too wooden-headed to even consider moving, because she kneels down in front of him and crushes him into a hug.

He's been hugged by Lisbon before, but this is something else entirely. He had no idea of her upper body strength before. There's a sound that might be his ribs cracking. He decides he doesn't care, and buries his face in her neck. She smells of gun oil and he can feel her Kevlar vest underneath her jacket.

"Lisbon," he manages to croak out.

She gives him a final, bonecrunching squeeze before letting go, and settles back on her heels, staring into his eyes as though she's searching for signs of concussion.

"What are you doing here?" she asks. I got your voicemail. I thought – I don't know what I thought. How did you...? No. Wait. _God_."

He's rarely seen Lisbon genuinely at a loss for coherent words. He'd be amused, if she didn't look stricken, and if his head didn't feel like someone was hacksawing through it.

"I was going to leave," he says slowly, every word an effort, and then: "I'm sorry," because it's the only thing that comes close to expressing what he wants to say to her. He _is_ truly, genuinely sorry.

She blinks. "You smell like something died," she says, wrinkling her nose.

He thinks about saying: "Something did," but it's too soon; will probably always be too soon to laugh about this, and anyway his tongue is leaden.

* * *

Lisbon makes horrified clucking noises about his blistered and bloody feet and makes him sip lukewarm Gatorade that she makes up for him from powder, with sugar added for shock. It's truly disgusting, but he understands the reasoning, and that she needs to fuss over him.

It's always been a big part of her character, this need to take care of people who don't deserve it. Jane thinks it's a shame that so few of the people she's cared about have deserved her. Lying on her couch, watching her, he thinks he would do anything for her in this moment: slay her dragons, burn down the villages of anyone who slights her. She looks at him curiously, pushing back a strand of hair that's come loose from her chignon as she finds medical supplies. She doesn't keep more food in the kitchen than would feed a mouse, but her first aid kit is a thing of beauty, extensive and meticulously maintained. Jane thinks about her treating her own cuts and bruises and scrapes, and feels a sudden flash of anger at the world.

She's an unsympathetic nurse, but he expected no less. When he leans forward to sit up, he feels it in every muscle of his body and can't stop an involuntary hiss of air through his teeth. She leans across to him and puts her hands on his arms, in a gesture not terribly useful but, Jane thinks, definitely good for the heart.

"How far did you -" she starts, and then stops herself. "Never mind."

"You can ask me questions, you know," he tells her, and his tone comes out snippier than he intended.

She looks at him for a long moment. "I don't want to," she says finally, although not with finality, and then she grabs his elbows and pulls him upright with the air of someone tearing off a band-aid.

He sees stars; hears the whirling of the room around him as though he's spinning. As it revolves, he notices she's drawn all the curtains while he wasn't paying attention. The room is a cocoon, shadowed and wrapped up in its own space. He wonders if he opens the door, will there be anything left outside?

* * *

Lisbon is still in front of him, waiting, when he comes back to earth. She's fretting over the state of his knees, now, and threatening to pick the shrapnel-sharp pieces of gravel out of his road rash with tweezers. Jane thinks he'd like them to stay, perhaps as souvenirs.

She looks alarmed, and it's a moment before he realizes he said that out loud.

"I think you need to see a doctor," she says.

Jane sighs.

"I'm serious," she says. "Don't you make that face at me."

"I don't need a doctor," he says, trying to reassure her but also a little frustrated that she doesn't seem to understand the situation. Lisbon is usually lightning-fast to catch on. Her ability to make connections is one of the things he's always liked best about her.

"And 'Don't you understand the situation, Lisbon?'" she says, doing an imitation of his voice that Jane thinks borders on unflattering. "Please, Jane. I understand perfectly. We both knew this day was coming. The only thing that's surprising to me is that you came back."

I couldn't keep going without you, he thinks but manages to restrain himself from saying. He must be even more tired than he thought, because it's definitely not the events of the day coming back to haunt him. Definitely not. He has not the faintest regret. But still, he's terribly maudlin.

"I thought you'd be bored without me," he says finally, but his delivery, he notes, is a little flat.

Lisbon snorts, at least somewhat appeased. "Well, if you change your mind, we could always disguise you."

Jane immediately pictures himself in a fedora, glasses, and a glued-on mustache. He's moderately cheered by the image. He realizes it's possible she knows him better than he thought.

* * *

In his dream, he's back inside the psychiatric hospital, all beige walls and windows that don't open from the inside. Charlotte is there – teenage poison-hallucination Charlotte, with her bright hair and smart mouth. She is Angela's daughter, even in his imagination. Angela had had the blackest sense of humor he's ever come across, and he's spent ten years working with cops.

Charlotte has brought him a paper bag full of overripe raspberries, but he isn't hungry. They sit at a picnic table with the bag between them, the berries slowly collapsing into stringy red juice. They talk about secrets of the universe that he won't remember when he wakes up.

The lights click off suddenly, and Jane jerks backward and tries to stand. He has to move toward Charlotte, to protect her, but he's being pulled back down to the bench by his wrists.

When the lights come back on, the first thing he sees is the handcuffs, glinting impossibly bright, making stars in his vision.

Then he looks up, and recoils in shock. On the other side of the table, McAllister is holding Charlotte's hand. Jane feels a tremble start and travel through his body, and stiff-armed he pulls at the cuffs again, not taking his eyes off the man opposite him.

"I'll kill you," he hears himself say. Or maybe it's: "I killed you."

McAllister looks at him expressionlessly, then raises his hand joined with Charlotte's as though in greeting before starting to lead her away.

Jane hears a low, rumbling moan, and it builds and builds to a roar that sounds like pain and outrage, like a wounded animal.

He realizes the noise is coming from him, and then the lights go out.

When they flicker back on, Lisbon is beside him. She's wearing a slinky green patterned-silk slip dress that traces the curves of her body as if it's damp, and her hair is wet and falls straight down her back. She looks like a noir femme fatale, or maybe a mermaid. He feels himself stirring and leans toward her, yearning, and although there's some reason he's not supposed to be doing this, he can't quite put his finger on it at the moment. She leans into him in return, her hair brushing his face, and he pulls at the cuffs, unable to quite touch her, as she whispers into his ear.

"Let me help you," she says, her breath against his cheek, her lips a ghost, and then: "I'm sorry."

* * *

Jane wakes to the light again, and he's gasping for breath. He sits upright, immediately feeling the muscles pull in his shoulders and back, and feels the throb in his legs and feet reassert itself. He doesn't know if he's ever been in pain like this before. Car crashes and beatings are somehow taking a very distant second place.

Lisbon is in the doorway, her hand at the light switch. Jane isn't sure if he's relieved or disappointed that her night attire is not as revealing as he'd dreamed. She's still in her jeans and long-sleeved shirt, although she's shucked off her boots and jacket. She looks tired, and in some backward part of his brain he thinks he should have asked her what happened to her today.

"You were talking in your sleep," she says softly.

He wonders if that's a concession, if he might have been yelling or perhaps shrieking like some horrified beast. He feels sick again, thinking about McAllister's hand joined with Charlotte's, and it's all getting tied up with his dream-memory of Mermaid Lisbon and it's getting confusing, to say the least.

He realizes he hasn't answered her. "Bad dreams," he says, his voice coming out a croak. He wants to apologize for waking her, but he can't seem to be sorry she came upstairs.

"Do you want company?" Lisbon bites her lip.

"Always," he says. "Anyway, I shouldn't be taking your bed. Were you sleeping on the couch?"

She shrugs. "I can't imagine I'll be sleeping much tonight. This morning. Whatever."

He remembers her shepherding him half-asleep to the bed, her hand on his shoulder. He has a sudden flashback to when they first met, another time she'd led him around broken.

"Come here," he says, moving to make room for her on the bed beside him.

She shakes her head, crossing the room instead to the overstuffed chair that sits beneath the window. She starts picking folded pieces of laundry off it and putting them on the floor.

"You can sleep in the bed," he says.

"I'm not going to sleep with you," she says tiredly, obviously without thinking.

Jane can't help it; his sense of humor has always come out at the worst moments. He thinks of several responses, but satisfies himself with just raising his eyebrows at her.

"Shut up," Lisbon says, throwing a folded towel at his head.

She settles herself in the chair and he hands her the afghan folded over the foot of the bed. She wraps it around herself but her posture stays strained and her fingers play constantly with the blanket's fringe.

"Go to sleep," she says softly, after Jane's been watching her for a while.

He shakes his head.

After a while, she sighs and rearranges herself on the chair, folding her legs underneath her. Jane sees her gaze flick hesitantly to the light switch and then to him.

"Leave it on," he says. He's never been good at seeing her in distress: he desperately wants to offer her something; any distraction. It's probably for the best that she wouldn't lie beside him, really. "The whole division?" he asks finally; quietly.

It seems to break the spell; she gets up, letting the afghan fall, and sits on the bed beside him. He curls his body around so he can see her face.

"The whole bureau," she says, her normally too-expressive eyes wide and blank.

He wants to reach out for her – he aches for the warmth of contact; he's shivering inside. He ends up touching her arm, instead, with his fingertips, as though searching for a pulse. He remembers her touching his arm in the same way before, when he needed comfort, when she wasn't sure if he was going to break down or give up or explode.

There's a long moment where everything seems to hang in the air. And then she leans into him, just fractionally; he barely sees her move.

Someone has to stop being the responsible adult here, Jane thinks, and he wraps his arm around her shoulder and pulls her into his lap. She stiffens, and for a heartstopping second he thinks he's made a terrible mistake. Then she turns, folding herself into his arms, small and warm and alive, and there's a sharp, bittersweet pain in his heart, like the feeling he gets looking at a sunset sometimes. Like everything's too beautiful for him to take in.


	2. Chapter 2

2) all the books unbound

* * *

"Don't go," Jane says in the morning.

Lisbon is freshly showered and dressed in all black, as though it's a day of mourning. She hadn't slept, after all, although she did curl up beside him for maybe half an hour before restlessly going back downstairs. She'd turned off the light on her way out, and he'd pretended to be asleep. _She needs space_, he'd reminded himself, quashing the urge to hold onto her like a life raft.

"I have to go, Jane," she says, slinging her messenger bag over one shoulder. "They have questions. A lot of questions, it turns out. Someone needs to give them some answers and if it's me, it could take some heat off Cho and Rigsby and Van Pelt. The FBI's looking for people to blame. I don't want it to be my team." She readjusts the strap of her bag, frowning. "Anyway, it's my job."

"It's not your job if the CBI doesn't exist anymore," Jane reminds her, and then regrets it when he sees her flinch. He should understand, really. Lisbon needs to try and tell the truth; to explain that the CBI wasn't rotten at the roots. She can't let it go until there's absolutely nothing left she can do. Jane's had a little experience himself at being unable to let things go.

Still, he doesn't want her to go. She said it herself, the FBI is looking for people to blame.

"What are you going to say when they ask where I am?" he says. He's not sure if he should make the question a joke or not, and it comes out plaintive.

"By the time I get into the field office, you could be gone anywhere. So I won't actually be lying if I say I don't know."

She's come a long way, his Lisbon. Jane thinks about how by-the-book she was when they met, and feels partly proud and partly terrible.

"I won't be, though," he says.

She looks at him curiously.

"I won't be gone anywhere," he clarifies.

Lisbon rolls her eyes. "Yeah, well, it's not like it would be out of character for you to be - _anywhere_. So this way I can at least pretend my complete lies to law enforcement and the federal government aren't completely complete."

* * *

She calls a cab, because her car is still impounded. Jane feels bad, because that might be partly his fault.

"Might be?" Lisbon says, raising her eyebrows. "Partly?"

He shrugs. "I'd lend you mine, but -"

Lisbon grimaces. "They're probably side by side."

"Any chance you'll get it back today?" Jane asks hopefully.

She shakes her head. "Couple weeks, maybe. It's useless to their ongoing investigation, obviously, since it's already established that you drove it and where you drove it. But I'm pretty sure Abbott's just going to cockblock me at every turn."

Jane blinks. "I didn't even know you knew that word."

"Oh, I know a lot of words you've never heard me say before." A muscle tics in her jaw. She's working up a head of steam, which Jane thinks is preferable to the quiet despair he'd seen last night. "The GPS isn't even admissible. Isn't even _legal_ - I still can't believe he did that. It's like something _you'd_ do."

Jane isn't sure if he's being insulted or Abbott is. "Luckily I kept it moving. That distracted them for a while, at least."

"Yeah," she says dryly, leaning her hip against the table. "You'll have to remind me to thank your friends."

He shrugs. "I was kind of hoping they'd get it to Mexico at least, and I could pick it up for you there on my way. You know," he ameliorates. "If I was still alive."

She freezes, eyes wide. Jane hears her cab pull up outside; the driver lying on the horn. Lisbon twitches at the sound – two days, Jane thinks, without real sleep - then casts around until she finds her keys.

"You definitely won't consider staying here?" Jane asks hopefully.

She finds the keys and slips the key ring over an index finger, looking at him impatiently. "Sure, Jane, that will work out great. I'm sure I can stay here and take a nap, and some friendly forest animals will take care of all my responsibilities."

"You never used to be this sarcastic," he says, and steps forward, closing his fingers around her hand and keys before letting go. "Be careful."

She rocks back on one foot. "Oh," she says. "Yeah. You, too."

* * *

Jane spends the morning eating peanut butter crackers he finds in the fruit bowl, of all places, and thinking. He also figures out why the apartment smells of figs. There's a scented candle in the second drawer he opens, following his nose. The smell is very strong but pleasant, and his senses could use a little overpowering sweetness right now. He lights it and puts it in the window beside the door, between the curtain and the glass, where Lisbon will see it when she comes back to him.

In the same drawer he finds a photo album, soft with age. He silently approves – people don't seem to keep photos anymore, although he's always liked the tangibility of them. He traces a finger over pictures of Lisbon's family, trying to see resemblances.

He doesn't find one featuring her father, but there are a few of her mother. He stops on one, taking in the woman's pale-red hair and strong jaw. Toddler Teresa grips her mother's leg and glares balefully from behind her skirt; baby – James? - is swaddled and caught mid-yowl. Jane is struck by the woman's face. She is Teresa around the eyes, but she gazes at the camera with a serene smile he's never seen on his particular Lisbon.

Leafing through the pages, he finds one of Teresa and Tommy and baby Annie and Teresa's dog. Teresa's hair is chin-length; Tommy has what looks like a split lip; the dog stares adoringly at the baby.

Jane feels a sudden wave of panic, looking at her younger self. He should leave. Now, before she gets home. He could send her a letter from the road, explaining himself, or trying to. Another voicemail, this time coded heavily: _I don't need you anymore._ He could do that, he thinks. He has it in him. Maybe. Or he could leave without any trace, leaving her to wonder and worry. It would hurt her, but maybe that was better, in the long term.

He should leave. A better man would leave. He's protected her this far – not always perfectly, he'll admit. She has scars she didn't have when they met.

This is it, though, this is the end of all things. His always-crippled heart has broken down; he's not going to have anything left to offer her in this new, dismantled life she's going to find herself in. He should leave.

* * *

He doesn't leave.

* * *

Jane doesn't even know what the dog's real name had been. Lisbon had talked about it only once or twice, when she was either very tired or a little drunk, and he'd only heard the joke-name Lucky. He wonders if she withheld the name deliberately, the same way he did when he talked about his wife and daughter, because saying those ghost-names out loud gave people information about you, even if that information was only that you'd once loved a crooked-legged dog. He knows his own voice betrays him sometimes when he tries to speak. He thinks there were a few years there that he went entirely without saying their names out loud, where the only place those names were heard were in his head.

Then he'd been going on a coffee run with Rigsby one soft-blue spring morning and he'd seen a riot of tiny purple flowers growing through the paved sidewalk.

"She'd love this," Jane had said absently.

Rigsby had scratched his chin, still getting used to his new lack of facial hair. "Who?"

Jane had started to say "Angela," and the name had died in his throat. He'd forgotten for a second how her death had frozen everything, and then it came back to him and it was worse than before, because for a moment he'd put that weight down and when he picked it up again it broke his back.

* * *

Sometimes he almost misses the early days, before he found Lisbon and the CBI. He'd been swimming in grief, but his family's faces had still been clear in his mind. He dreamed about them often, when he finally managed to fall asleep, in the dark gray dreams he had just before he woke again. There's always a moment just after waking where the dream is more vivid than reality. Jane learned to live for that moment.

Then he'd started trying to think of ways to make that moment last longer, and from there it was a surprisingly easy slide into staring at beige walls all day and swallowing bitter pills as though they would help.

He hadn't had anyone on the outside; no-one dropping by for visitor's day or sending him cards that said "Sorry about your psychotic break" in ornate script, accompanied by gilt-edged flowers. He'd had no reason to get out of the hole, except for Red John. Maybe one day, when things aren't so raw, he can be grateful for that. Maybe not.

* * *

She comes home late, with groceries and a thousand-yard stare. The first thing she does is locate the candle and lick her fingers to extinguish the flame between index and thumb. She catches his eye and says "Fire hazard," tension in the line of her jaw. Jane knows better than to push her when she's upset, so he sighs and helps her put the food away.

"Don't start," she warns, looking everywhere but at him.

So he doesn't start. He sits on her couch eating one of the red apples she bought and reading an old newspaper he found under a stack of unopened mail on her kitchen table. He sees the Bruins lost again, whatever a Bruin is.

"Your bathtub was covered in dust," he says conversationally. He'd soaked his feet in warm water before peeling off his socks, which had stuck to his blistered heels. The socks were currently washed and hanging over Lisbon's shower rail; he'd left his feet bare and dry.

Lisbon looks up from the refrigerator door, where she's organizing milk and juice in an arrangement that Jane doesn't understand. "I never have time to take baths," she says.

"But you're a bath person," he says. "Rather than a shower person."

She lets out an exasperated breath. "What kind of question is that?"

Jane refrains from mentioning that it was a statement, rather than a question. "Four different kinds of bubble bath in your bathroom cabinet," he points out.

"I get them for Christmas!" Lisbon finishes with her complicated beverage-placement ritual and goes to shut the fridge door, then stops it before it can close, rattling the cartons in place. She glances in the next bag, then picks it up and shoves it in one piece onto the interior shelf, and this time she slams the door. "What the hell is your point?"

"You like baths," he says mildly. "No reason to deny it. You should take more baths. Your ten-year life-consuming case is over. You have time to take baths now. Go to it, Lisbon. Take bubble baths. Go on a beach vacation. Get a boyfriend."

Lisbon scowls. "If I wanted a boyfriend, I'd have one. God, Jane, with you nothing's ever - "

"Nothing's ever what?" Jane asks, when she doesn't go on.

But instead of replying she glares at him, then abandons the rest of the groceries and goes upstairs to spend a long time in the bedroom with the door shut.

Jane puts away the rest of the food and wonders what she's doing up there. He imagines her leaning back against the wall, eyes squeezed shut, trying to find her bearings. It's a little easier, he wants to tell her, when you have already established your true north.

* * *

He orders Chinese food, although he knows she'll make a face because she _bought groceries for a reason, Jane_. He thinks she probably needs a little comfort, though, and home cooked meals are not exactly his specialty. Also, he doesn't really like opening ovens anymore.

When the delivery guy knocks, Lisbon appears on the stairs, drawn and quivering.

"I ordered food," Jane tells her gently, but she remains tense throughout the transaction and doesn't even comment on Jane taking cash from her wallet to pay. He sets out beef with honey sauce and fried rice on the table, raids the newly-stocked fridge for beer, and waits.

Lisbon paces, skirting the still-covered windows. She can't seem to calm down, which disquiets Jane in turn. He hates seeing her unhappy, and for a second thinks of suggesting a breathing exercise to her. He discounts the thought almost immediately, because from past experience he knows that distracting her with what she considers trivialities when she's at full alert will only frustrate her, but she needs to eat.

He thinks about what to do for a long minute, and then he walks over to her and puts a hand on her back. She jumps, as though she hadn't heard him approach, and turns to him. Her eyes are red.

"You shouldn't have answered the door," she says. "I wasn't thinking. I don't know what I was thinking."

"I don't think the takeout deliveryman is an FBI informant," he says calmly. "Come and eat."

"There's a warrant out for you," she reminds him, but allows herself to be led.

"I know." He presses chopsticks into her hand. "C'mon, General," he says. "This is no way to run a campaign."

* * *

Jane can't find much emotion for a lot of the most recently deceased in his life, and that includes the CBI itself. He's known for a long time that empires fall. He'll miss his couch, his routine, and his friends, but nothing more. Lisbon, though, will grieve for the institution and the ideal. He doesn't share her pain, but he wishes he could, if only to take some of the weight from her.

She sighs. "I told the team to lie low, but they'll be interviewed too. Everyone else - " her voice gets smaller and trails off.

Jane watches her, waiting for her to go on.

Lisbon picks up a chopstick and rubs at the printed characters on it with her thumb. She looks up, catches Jane's eye, and bites her lip. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse.

"You ever see how it works when a cop goes to prison? Cops protect their own, right up until it all starts to go south. Then, you won't find anyone who'll admit to knowing you."

Jane is alarmed by the despondency in her voice. "But you're not going to prison," he says, a little too sharply. "Those cops – you're talking about people who crossed a line. They get brought to justice, the same as any criminal. You haven't crossed that line."

"The FBI thinks I've crossed every line there is," she says.

"That's ridiculous," Jane says. "You're not like that. You're the best person I know."

Lisbon laughs tiredly. "Thanks, Jane, you'll make a great character witness." She starts picking at her food; slowly at first and then more enthusiastically as, Jane thinks, she remembers that she's hungry.

Jane, on the other hand, is starting to feel sick.


	3. Chapter 3

3) conversations, though we utter not a sound

* * *

"I think it's cabin fever, Lisbon," he tells her. "Check my temperature. It could be terminal."

He's lying on her couch again, regarding her and the room from his reclining position. She has a textured paint ceiling. He's not sure he approves of the decorating choices, but then again Lisbon probably never looks up.

"It's been one day, Jane," she says. "It's not possible that you can't cope with one day. You've been to _jail_, for Pete's sake."

"It was different there," he says idly. "They locked the doors so I couldn't get out."

"Do you want me to handcuff you to the couch? Will that help? Because that can definitely be arranged."

This is the point where Jane usually makes a joke; bounces it back to her so they can keep playing the same way they always have. She worries; he takes risks. He flirts; she stammers and backs off. The two of them are as safe as houses, he thinks, looking at the ceiling again.

And it's on the tip of his tongue to reply – something about her control issues or how fake-hurt he is by her lack of trust. But he doesn't. He takes a long moment, and then he looks at her. She's sitting at the table still, although they've cleared away dinner, hands linked in front of her like a child saying prayers. Since polite after-dinner conversation didn't seem to be forthcoming, Jane had made himself comfortable.

Lisbon has untied her ponytail and her hair falls around her face in waves. Jane thinks about the photo of her he'd unearthed earlier. He'd always liked her hair shorter, but there's something softer about her these days.

"Sunshine or rain, Lisbon?"

"What?"

"Sunshine or rain?"

"Maybe you do have a fever," she grumbles. "Sunshine. Obviously."

"But what if there was more to the question?" he muses. "Sunshine, alone. Alone for good, maybe forever. Rain with someone you – with someone important to you."

"That's changing the question," Lisbon says uneasily.

"Yes," says Jane. "So it is."

* * *

She twitches almost imperceptibly whenever he walks past the covered windows, as though she's imagining he'll throw back the curtains and invite the world in. So rather than test her anxious frame of mind he's been imagining the stars and the night outside. It's deepest midnight blue in his mind, dark and soft, studded with the tiniest points of light that are almost not there. Since there's no reason not to go all the way, he adds in a beach and the sound of waves and the scent of coconuts. It's been a long time since he's spent any time at the beach.

He's worked on this skill before. This isn't his first house-arrest rodeo, but somehow, like he told her, this is different. He isn't quite sure if he should walk into FBI headquarters in broad daylight and commit hara-kiri with Lisbon's unloaded gun, or run as far away as he can. The problem with either of those scenarios, of course, is Lisbon.

Lisbon doesn't keep her guns loaded; that's something he's never known about her. When he asks her about it, she looks at him blankly and says "They're semi-automatics, Jane," as though that should mean something to him. She keeps her apartment cool and turns off lights whenever she leaves a room. She arranges her kitchen in a way that makes no logical sense to him – flatware drawers are made standard for a reason, Jane thinks. Her running shoes are well-worn and she has a handwritten and folded copy of Psalm 23 tucked between books on her shelf.

It's never been one of Jane's favorites.

He's finding out little details about her, final puzzle pieces falling into place. It all makes sense; these are all things that he could have imagined about her, knowing her as he does, or divined from her reactions if he'd questioned her. But somehow, there's something missing.

He wants more.

He wants more and he wants to _know_; not surmise, not make an educated guess. And it would be ridiculous, and it's definitely not the way the two of them work, and how would he even phrase it? "Lisbon, please tell me what you think about in the last moment before you fall asleep, and where is your favorite place to be kissed, and what was your dog's real name, and do you truly believe good people go someplace wonderful after they die?"

It just seems like he's missing so many important pieces of information.

* * *

Jane had kissed her once. They'd been late-night brainstorming in her hotel room and she'd kept yawning, apologizing, then yawning again. He'd told her there was nothing that couldn't wait until morning, and he'd been tired too, and kind of punch-drunk from too much caffeine and the heat of the summer's day. There had been a long moment, suspended in conditioned air and the pull of the stars through her window, where he'd been about to just say goodnight and leave.

And then he'd thought about the crime-scene photographs in the file sitting on the end of her bed, and thought about what they'd seen wrapped in garbage bags in a dry desert riverbed that morning. He'd felt that familiar flash of rage that always turned itself back into melancholy, and he'd reached out and hugged her.

She starfished, as usual, arms tense and out to her sides in the first moment, but then she'd relaxed and hugged him back. He never allowed himself too much human contact: it was safer for his continued stability. But now he breathed in her hair and in an impulsive second, went to kiss her on the cheek. And Lisbon had – actually, he didn't know exactly what Lisbon had done, but he'd found himself with his lips pressed against hers.

It was a fraction of a second of contact, but it had haunted his thoughts for weeks afterward. He'd felt guilt and hot shame and and a kind of exasperation with himself for being melodramatic – Lisbon had drawn back calmly, after all, and then told him she'd see him in the morning as though nothing had happened – but he couldn't seem to lock the memory into a box and file it away. It kept coming back at inconvenient moments: in line at the sandwich place; sitting in early-morning traffic; when he was waiting for water to heat or the elevator to arrive.

It was, he supposes, a natural progression. Lisbon had been invading his sleeping dreams for years, by that point.

And even that was normal and perfectly sane, just something that happens when you spent a lot of time with someone – once he'd dreamed Minelli was his roommate, after all – but in dreams, as in real life, Lisbon somehow always manages to be different from everyone else.

He'd be walking along the beach with Angela on their honeymoon, and Lisbon would be sitting on the sand, staring out to sea as though they weren't there, the wind blowing her hair back against her face. He'd be arguing with his father in their trailer while Lisbon puzzled over paperwork at the table, tapping her pen against her lips as she thought. Once, memorably, she was Red John, mocking drawl somehow a combination of her voice and the odd, distorted intonations that had been on constant repeat in his head, and in his dream-logic he'd thought _of course, of course, how could I not have known?_ as she'd sliced open his stomach with a curved knife in her right hand.

He'd woken from that one heartsick, nauseated, aroused, pulse pounding. He'd cold-showered it away, but been shaky and atonic for the rest of the day.

Sometimes he hates sleep.

* * *

He's remembering hotel rooms a lot today. Hotel rooms and gas stations and diners and seafood restaurants with questionable kitchen hygiene.

Nostalgia covers some of his memories, at least, with syrup-heavy sweetness. Remember the hotel room - _hotel _was probably too strong a word - where he could see the manager's two horses, snorting and eating hay, out back in their corral through the window? Remember Grace leaning against the SUV, rufescent hair glorious in the last of the day's light, watching with loyal eyes as Lisbon talked to a highway patrol officer? Remember Cho buying a granola bar at the gas station they'd stopped at on some coastal road, throwing it into Jane's chest on his return as though Jane had asked for it? Remember? Remember?

Lisbon's eyes in the moment before he shot her. Lisbon's voice: rasping, terrified, on the phone, reassuring him that she was all right. Lisbon's hand, small and warm in his, and he'd thought it was the end of the world. So much of all of this was coming back to Lisbon.

* * *

"They need probable cause," she's explaining to him like he's five years old. "If they're watching the apartment and they see you? If someone gives them a credible lead that you're here? That is _beyond_ probable cause, Jane. They'll be here in seconds. If they even suspect - do you even have a plan B?"

Jane ignores that. "Beyond probable cause," he murmurs instead. "_Definite_ cause."

"It's not a joke."

"We're-absolutely-certain cause." He stops when he sees her face, then stands up and moves over to the table. He pulls out a chair – beside her, this time, instead of the adversarial cater-corner she'd chosen before – and leans forward to touch her arm. "Try not to worry."

She looks up at him, eyes searching.

"We'll just say I was holding you hostage," he says easily.

She lets go of an exasperated breath. "No-one would ever believe that, Jane."

"Because I'm too good a person."

"Because I would kick your ass in the first five minutes and arrest you."

"You are very feisty," Jane agrees, tapping a finger against his lip. "What if I drugged you?"

"I can't believe we're having this conversation," Lisbon mutters.

* * *

Later, he decides he likes the sound of water running in her shower and the faint dampness it brings to the air, even as far away as here downstairs. The weather channel's predicting rain, and he finds himself strangely disappointed by the fact that there's absolutely no way he can go outside and experience it for himself; no way to feel the spatter of droplets on his skin. Jane has always liked wild weather; he hopes for electrical storms and hail and punishing winds. Nature has a way of forcing change.

Lisbon's hair curls wildly in the steam from a shower; that's something else he'd never known about her. She's already showered today, but she clearly needs room and something to do. He hadn't really factored in how much his presence was going to impact her or how much she had to process. Of course, he hadn't really factored in anything, he'd just let his feet move him here. There's probably something to be said for letting his body parts do the thinking for him.

She's in jeans – he's always liked her in jeans – and a button down shirt and she braids her hair while simultaneously typing out texts and frowning at her phone.

"I have to go out," she tells him abruptly.

"Oh?" Jane says, affecting disinterest. He's doing the crossword puzzle in her newspaper, and he doesn't look up. "Who were you talking to?"

There's a long moment before she speaks, and he looks up.

A look crosses her face that he can't quite decipher. "I can't tell you."

Jane looks down at his paper; back up at her. "I understand," he says quietly.

This time, her expression clearly says _I don't believe you_ as she gathers her things and gets ready to leave. He hears how slow her movements are though, and knows she's hesitating. He stares down at the newspaper, unseeing.

"What are you thinking about?" she asks, so softly he almost doesn't hear her.

For once, he replies honestly. "People we've lost along the way. We've lost a lot, Teresa."

"I know," she says, looking uncertain. "Your family - "

"My family," he agrees. "Our colleagues. Friends. Innocents." He hears himself say it, and thinks: _innocence_. And then: sleep. Youth. Mental health. Trust. Happiness. Hope.

Lisbon takes a step closer and ducks her head to look into his eyes. "I never wanted it to end like this," she says.

Jane weighs that in his mind, and then, suddenly, his pensive mood twists.

No, he thinks. You didn't want it to end like this. You wanted Red John on trial; in jail, like there was a prison cell that would hold him or a law enforcement agency he couldn't compromise. She would have _let him go,_ shrieks the hind part of his mind, roiling red-hot inside his head.

And he must have given something of that away on his face, because Lisbon, studying him, blinks. Then her jaw comes up and he sees that light come on in her eyes that would make him nervous, if she wasn't on his side.

"What?" she asks slowly, tempered steel in her tone.

"Nothing," he says automatically, brushing her away like he has a hundred times before. Sometimes he forgets that he's alone in this; that Red John is and always has been _his_ responsibility and his promise, no-one else's. He was bound to Red John by the blood of his family. Lisbon could never really hope to understand.

Although – he falters, as the red fog of anger starts to clear. Lisbon has lost, too. He thinks about what she'd said about the bureau - _the whole CBI,_ about Bosco, about the fact that she has a smooth gray stone and a Glock 19 in her nightstand where normal people would keep books, or their knitting, or condoms, or _anything_ but this symbol of how unsafe she was. Of how unsafe Jane had made her.

He weighs this in his mind, considering, then stands up and moves to walk past her, thinking he'll make a cup of tea and contemplate.

But she stops him with an outstretched hand. "Jane," she says.

He composes his face before looking at her expressionlessly. "Tea, Lisbon?"

"No," she says firmly. "Tell me."

He feigns ignorance, stepping around her grasp and avoiding her eyes. "There's nothing to tell," he says blandly.

She's at his side like a shot, eyes blazing. "You don't think you owe me a little truthfulness?"

Oh, that was a low blow, he thinks, even for Lisbon, who has always known where to stick the knife in him, even though she almost always refrains from doing so. There is one weak point she's never hit before, though. This is one weak point that she's never quite figured out.

He does owe her, of course. He loves her as well. He's not stupid enough to refuse to admit it to himself, even though he'd withstand torture before saying the words out loud. Before saying the words out loud again.

It would put her at risk, he thinks, to say it. Better to show her with apples and a smooth stone paperweight he'd found at the side of the road and late night phone calls because he'd finished a book he thought she'd want to hear about. So she's never quite understood what she means to him. If she had, things could have gone very differently.

He would have, he thinks desperately, looking at her marine eyes; at the wisp of curled hair coming free from its braid. Thinking about that gun and that stone. He would have stopped it all, to protect her.


End file.
